WESTJET will be offering 1.2 million seats in and out of Winnipeg from Halloween to the end of April, making this the largest winter schedule the airline has ever operated in Winnipeg. It’s all part of a Western Canadian expansion for the Calgary-based airline, says John Weatherill, the company’s executive vice-president and chief commercial officer.
“Winnipeg is a critical part of our network,” he says. WestJet’s capacity has grown by 33 per cent for the upcoming winter season, boasting 224 non-stop destinations out of Winnipeg, 26 if Sunwing Airlines is included. (WestJet acquired the sun tour operator in May 2023.) Some of that growth is with new routes while some of it is geared towards the business community.
“If you’re based in Winnipeg, you can do same-day business to Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Saskatoon. You can leave in the morning and be back in your bed that night. People want to minimize the amount of time they travel and avoid connections. The ability to get in and out of a city to do business is very important for the economy of a city,” he says.
Weatherill is quick to credit Economic Development Winnipeg (EDW) and the Winnipeg Airports Authority for their roles in providing more air connectivity to the city. “What we love about Winnipeg, besides the diversified economy and the fact it’s a stable and growing market, is there’s a Team Manitoba approach to developing the provincial economy. Air service is the single greatest economic development investment a city can make. We love the way the city, the province, EDW and tourism partners come together to support these investments as a team. It’s very important,” he says.
WestJet is the largest airline in seven of the eight biggest cities from Manitoba to British Columbia — Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Kelowna and Victoria. Over the last year or so, WestJet has also established a pilot and flight attendant base in Winnipeg. That includes 129 pilots and nearly 200 flight attendants who are based in the Manitoba capital. When another 100 seasonal flight attendants from Sunwing are added in, the company’s employee base in the city is nearing 500 people. Weatherill acknowledges that WestJet had a difficult summer from an operational point of view, with a mechanics strike at the beginning of the summer and a “historic” hail storm in Calgary in August that damaged 10 per cent of its fleet.
“The good news is we have fully stabilized our operations and we’re back to being the most reliable major airline in Canada,” he says.
